Driver gets 6¼ years for hit-and-run

Wednesday

A 31-year-old Cottage Grove man was sentenced Tuesday to 75 months in prison for a June 6 hit-and-run crash that killed Lane Community College student and volunteer firefighter Bryson Michael Krissie.

Jason Manske also lost his Oregon driving privileges permanently and was ordered to pay $36,797 in restitution.

Moments before his sentencing, Krissie’s parents voiced anguish over Manske’s decision to leave their dying son alone on the roadside after striking him on a 30th Avenue shoulder near LCC.

“I can’t believe you hit another person, watched them roll off your truck, and just kept going,” Krissie’s mother, Jackie Varnum, said in a statement read by prosecutor JoAnn Miller. “You left my baby there, struggling for air, and you didn’t even call for help.”

Tom Krissie, the victim’s father, came from his Montana home to address his son’s killer personally, calling him “nothing but a destroyer.”

“Some day I hope you have to go to a cemetery and touch your cold, dead child,” he told Manske, later concluding: “When you stand before the gates of God, your sins will come down on you and I will see you in hell.”

Manske turned in his seat at the defense table and faced Tom Krissie throughout his remarks.

“I’m sorry,” he told him.

Later, Manske told Lane County Circuit Judge Maurice Merten he wished he could trade places with his victim.

The sentencing followed Manske’s guilty pleas to criminally negligent homicide, failing to perform the duties of a driver and tampering with physical evidence, as well as to several drug offenses in two earlier cases.

An investigation showed that Manske had been driving a Silverado pickup truck outside the road’s travel lane for some time before striking Krissie about 10:15 p.m., Miller told the judge.

Manske later told investigators he knew he’d hit someone, but didn’t stop to render aid because he was “scared because he had no insurance,” Miller said.

“He took off and tried to ditch the truck at a friend’s house and hide it there,” Miller said.

The evidence-tampering charge reflected Manske’s efforts to get the friend to repair the damage to his vehicle. Police arrested Manske two days after the fatal incident, after receiving a tip about the location of the damaged Silverado.

Manske told investigators he struck Krissie after falling asleep and drifting off the road while driving home after eating at The Highlands Brew Pub in south Eugene.

Miller said state officials suspect he may have been driving under the influence of intoxicants at the time of the crash, but they lacked proof to support a more serious manslaughter charge because he was not apprehended and tested right away.

Krissie’s mother told Merten that her son spent his first days in the neonatal intensive care unit, but he grew into a “no fear” boy who walked, talked, climbed trees and rode bikes at an early age.

As a high school football player, he was “never afraid to go up against boys twice his size,” Varnum said in her statement. He struggled academically, but earned his high school diploma and had just started taking paramedic classes toward his planned career as a professional firefighter. He so loved volunteering with the Dexter Fire Department that he went to the station just to wash the trucks and sweep the driveway, she said.

“Every day I look at his picture and can’t believe he is never coming home,” she said. She urged Manske to spend his prison time to “think about the life you took and use that to make your life better.”

Krissie’s roommate, Cory Sekora, also attended the sentencing, along with more than a dozen of the victim’s other friends and relatives.

Sekora told Manske he’d killed “a great young man” who was full of life. He said Manske was lucky that Lane County and the state of Oregon decided his fate.

“If it was up to us, you would get 30 years or more,” he said.

A second hit-and-run crash that occurred just 11 days earlier on a nearby stretch of East 30th Avenue remains unsolved.

Eugene bicyclist Timothy McCreary, 54, died after a vehicle struck him from behind about 11 p.m. on May 26 as he biked westbound near Forest Boulevard. The driver fled the scene, leaving the severely injured McCreary on the roadway.

A passing motorist stopped to render aid, but he could not get to McCreary before another vehicle ran over him.

Based on debris found at the scene, the Lane County Sheriff’s Office has determined that McCreary initially was hit by a 1997 Ford F-150 pickup. The crash would have damaged the vehicle’s front, driver’s side headlight and marker lights, its driver-side rearview mirror, and possibly its windshield, investigators say.

Anyone with information on the May 26 accident, the suspect vehicle or its driver is asked to call the sheriff’s office at 541-682-4141.

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